Main menu

You Are The CEO — The Chooser of Experiences and Outcomes in Your Life

Who determines the experiences you have and the outcomes you achieve? Can we humans choose these? What does the “terrain” of human choice look like? Is it in our nature to be able to choose?

For thousands of years philosophers have explored the frontiers of the nature of the human being. What they found was determined in great part by the features they were looking for. This is like the mappers of geography who found different features underwater, underland, overland, in the air, and in outer space. Or the mappers of the biology of the planet, who found different creatures and features when they looked in the oceans, in the air, or on land. Likewise the early mappers of human nature found different features. For example, while Hobbes and Locke focused on the rights and behavior of individuals, Marx and Hegel focused more on the influence of the group over individuals (Leys, 1952. Ethics for Policy Decisions, p135). These mappers described different features of the human experience, of how we as humans relate to our experience, which can be synthesized into five primary relationships, to self, other, group, nature (the creative process), and spirit (the creative source). When I look at humanity today, with what we are aware of as humans, and with the challenges we are taking on, I see a new feature emerging in the nature of humankind, that of choice. Choice in what we experience and the outcomes we achieve through our interactions.

What does this mean to you? As an individual, as a member of many groups, such as your family, your friends, your work, your community, your country, your planet, your universe, what does this mean to you? It means that you choose. You choose the experience in and outcomes of your interactions. Whether these choices are conscious or unconscious, they are choices, and they are yours.